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If you don’t think insurance is important enough to protect yourself, consider it as a marketing ploy. Either way, regardless of how you look at it you can’t run a business without insurance. There are too many variables if you don’t have downside protection. That’s how we use it. I tell people it’s like hedging bets when you gamble in Vegas. You always want to have a downside limit to how much you can lose. If you have your life invested in your business and no insurance, your losses have the potential to be more than 100% of your investment.

I’m going to come right out and say it. 1099 contractors are almost always employees. Almost always is probably shooting low because as far as detail shops and similar businesses, you fail the IRS criteria test probably over 90% of the time. I know this may surprise some of you reading this, but if you didn’t think this was the case you probably wouldn’t be here reading this. I wrote 5 reasons your 1099 contractor is actually your employee to highlight this important compliance subject for small businesses.

Many detail shops have big problems classifying their employees correctly. Why? Mainly because some shop owners try to save a few bucks on the taxes paid for employees. So they think they can pull a fast one and pay their employees cash under the table. Even worse, some shop owners will tell their workers that they are “independent contractors” and just cut them a check each week. Either way, both methods are illegal. This behavior is the reason there are so many looming IRS problems for small business detail shops in this country. What’s worse is you hurt the people working for you. And you make the entire industry look like fly by night operators when you get caught.

Talk about bizzare. I get where both sides are coming from here. The guy, Nick Taylor, starts his car and leaves it running in the driveway to warm it up. Because it’s freaking cold out. Especially in Michigan. Then he runs inside to wait a few minutes. Shortly after a cop notices it running and puts a ticket on the car, then disappears. To be honest, it sounds really sleezy behavior on the part of the cop. Who does that? If he had a problem with it, why not knock on the guys door and advise him of the ordinance?

This is awesome news. If there is one truck/SUV that I grew-up with that I loved more than nearly all other similar vehicles, it was the Ford Bronco SUV. You remember the square/boxy design? It was a man’s truck. There was no prettiness about it, just “here I am, love me for my brute force and power”.

Technology is affordable and not as complicated as you might believe. If you automatically think you can’t afford to improve your business with simple and inexpensive technology, eventually your competitors will if they haven’t already done so. Detail Shop Technology is one of the most important upgrades you should be making in your detail shop.